So I started with the weirdest array of recommendations. I mostly wanted to fit in with this newish friend group so watched all the anime they told me to watch even if it hurt my brain.
First we have Madoka Magica. Peak media plain and simple and the main reason I tried others but it all goes downhill from here.
Attack on titan, started off interesting and very rapidly got weird I don’t think i lasted long the second the plot got strange i bailed. Probably stopped after the first season lol.
Ouran high school host club, love hate relationship with this one. The obsession with trying to make Haruhi more ladylike rubbed me the wrong way back then and still does now.
Highschool dxd…… i was really trying hard to fit in. I think this has to be the worst anime i have ever seen?
Re: zero. No no i think this is the worst anime i have ever seen and also gave me the ick for the screaming voice acting. Infact i hated this anime so much i took to the anime subreddit and argued with everyone there until i got banned wondering how a single person could like such utter garbage.
Shugo Chara, i think my friend recommended this to me to torture me for being born. Or to see how far id go to be accepted.
Angel beats, i rewatched this recently and still dont remember a single aspect of it.
Sword art online, anyone who likes isekai should be banned.
Nichijou, still definitively the best anime ever created.
Mirai Nikki, again i dont remember any of it
A bridge to the starry skies, there are chunks of my memories that feel like black holes and this is one of them
Hyakka ryouran…
kaichou wa maid-sama… this friend group was an elaborate plot to torment me I think.
Log Horizon, I actually liked this one it was just a bit boring
So i stopped listening to recommendations from others and picked my own which were
- cowboy bebop
- plastic memories
- your lie in april
- beyond the boundary
- 5 centimetres per second
- the pet girl of sakurasou (it has problematic tropes but for the time was like the most important being neurodivergent at school show i have ever seen)
- steins gate (my taste is very good as you can see)
- black lagoon
- SOUL EATER AAAAH AAAAHHH PEAK PEAK PEAK AAAAAAAHHHHH AAAAAAHHHHHHHH
- Full Metal Panic (the more i remember that I picked for myself the more i realise my taste is objectively better than everyone elses)
- Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom
- Maoyu: Archenemy & Hero
- Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
- Tokyo Ghoul (fell off so hard after the first season it isnt even funny)
- Toradora! (i watched so much romance)
- Clannad
Ok thats all of them, I kept the themes of every single one ehe
I think my own picks were better. But overall i think after watching these i stopped watching any anime at all for the next 12 years until picking it back up again for demon slayer, dungeon meshi and freeerreeennn. The last i watched before quitting from john attack on titan hoodie and merch as his only clothes that i swear never got washed was Seraph of the end which sucked so hard i disregarded the entire medium. His taste was exceptionally trash
Edit: god damn everyone watched dbz and pokemon except me. Dbz i avoided like the plague because its what boys watched and i didnt like anything boys did (still dont) and pokemon felt like it happened to me because of the era it couldn’t be avoided. My hot take is i never really liked pokemon, i even got fire red purely so i could fit in at school i didnt even like the game back then and only like it now because of nostalgia but if i could have chosen to not engage with Pokemon i would have just ignored it completely.
Now digimon however….
So the thing is I was always aware of Anime’s existence, but I generally didn’t like the look of it and in my childhood always wrote them off as childish cartoons. Back then I hated anything that would come off as childish or immature, and I didn’t allow myself to enjoy things. Funny thing is that I was also way into YuGiOh way back when. Didn’t watch the anime but absolutely fucked with the TCG.
I only started watching anime in 2020-2021. I don’t really remember which ones I watched first, but I know Naruto was one of the early ones. Also did Mob Psycho, Puella Magi etc. I think in terms of which anime I watched I stayed relatively mainstream.
What I did notice was that, way more than with live action tv shows, whether I’d like an anime or not was way unpredictable. Basically every anime was a coin toss as to whether I’d like it or not.
Some notable ones I didn’t like:
And in terms of favorite anime I think I’m right in the mainstream pocket as well, as they’d be:
I definitely appreciate the medium a lot more now than I ever did, but I’ll stick to my “real” shows hehe